The White House won't disclose its visitor logs

The White House
(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The White House announced Friday that it will not make its visitor logs public, Time reports. The decision represents a marked break between the Trump administration and its predecessor, as former President Barack Obama's White House voluntarily released nearly 6 million visitor logs — though the Obama logs did routinely omit visitors the White House deemed vaguely as "personal."

The Trump administration is using a 2013 federal court ruling to deem the visitor logs "presidential records" and thus shield them from the Freedom of Information Act. White House communications director Michael Dubke cited personal security as the reason for the privacy, saying it was in consideration of "the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Kimberly Alters

Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.